Women Are Being Penalized for Growing Their Careers Sideways — Here's What Needs to Change

[lingriiddd]

The data on gender pay gaps is well documented, but a new layer of research suggests the problem runs deeper than compensation alone — it is also embedded in how lateral career moves are evaluated, and it is getting worse as flexible and freelance work becomes the norm rather than the exception. Statistics Canada data from 2025 shows women aged 15 and older earning 88 cents for every dollar earned by men, with the gap wider still for racialized and Indigenous women. In the United States, women earn 82 cents per dollar. Among freelancers, the gap is larger still: a 2024 analysis found that women quote approximately 10% lower hourly rates than men. Research on the "glass wall" — the invisible barrier that limits women's career opportunities when they attempt to expand into new roles — suggests that part of this gap is driven not by differences in skill or output, but by how identical lateral moves are interpreted differently based on gender. When formal structures are removed, as they are in freelance and gig work, gender stereotypes do not disappear — they expand into the space left behind, shaping who gets the next opportunity with even less accountability than in traditional corporate settings.
The solutions researchers propose are practical and worth taking seriously at multiple levels. For companies, the starting point is data: most organizations track promotion rates by gender, but almost none track what happens when employees move laterally.

Auditing lateral move outcomes by gender would reveal a layer of bias that is currently invisible to most HR departments and leadership teams. For clients and hiring managers, the glass wall represents a straightforward missed opportunity — women with multiple skill sets are being systematically discounted not because of ability but because of bias, making them an undervalued talent pool. For freelancers navigating the system as it currently exists, presenting under an incorporated business name rather than a personal name has been shown to redirect evaluators' attention toward portfolio and work quality rather than gender cues. And for policymakers, accredited certification schemes for skill expansion could give all freelancers — especially women — a credible, bias-resistant signal of investment in new roles that carries enough weight to reduce evaluators' reliance on gut feelings shaped by stereotypes. The rise of flexible work was supposed to democratize opportunity. The glass wall research suggests it has done the opposite for the people who needed that democratization most.

[tradelikepro]

Freelance was supposed to fix inequality and somehow made it worse, classic.